The Creation Of My Hollywood Smile

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of these people that always comes away from appointments with doctors/dentists/orthodontists with a list of questions that I forgot to ask. My last few appointments with my orthodontist have been like that. I intend to write a list of questions beforehand, I procrastinate, I mean to get around to it, and then, in the end, I leave it too late and forget everything I want to ask.

This time however, wasn’t like that. For the first time I managed to actually remember all the things I wanted to talk about, coming away with a lot of good new information.

The first thing we discussed was refinements. I have 17 Upper and 34 Lower aligners on my first run of Invisalign (yes, there will be more!) and I was expecting that I might have to wait until all my lowers were finished before I could start the refinements on the top arch. I was relieved then, to be told that we actually get three attempts at refinement with my orthodontist, so I can start on the tops whilst the lowers are still going. Of course, it’s impossible to know whether I’ll actually need refinements at this stage, but knowing that it won’t impact on the overall timeframe of the treatment means that I may be more of a perfectionist on my top arch than I might otherwise have been. I’m not sure why but I had somewhere along the line convinced myself that there was only one refinement possible, so this was a great relief for me- with a case as complex as mine I have a feeling that we will need a few tweaks here and there.

My Orthodontist _ Dr Brett Kerr

Secondly, although I have written about my orthodontist a fair amount on this blog, I’ve never before named him as I felt that it wasn’t appropriate without his permission. I do get quite a few emails asking for his details, so I was keen to get them on here if possible. Anyway, another of things that I remembered to ask was his permission to give his name, and it was duly granted. So, if anybody is looking for an orthodontist in Brisbane, Australia, I’m happy to highly recommend Dr. Brett Kerr. His website is here with all his contact details and examples of past cases. (update: I think he’s now retired sadly!)

I did also tell him about my blog, which he said he’s going to read- I guess I’ll know whether he liked it next time I visit. If I suddenly need an unscheduled and highly painful round of extensive IPR (filing between my teeth) We’ll know that he wasn’t happy with what I’ve written!!

The other thing we talked at length about was the Vivera retainers that Invisalign offers. For those of you that haven’t heard of them, Invisalign offer a system whereby you receive a new retainer by mail every three months. Previously, some patients had reported that when they had bought two retainers, worn one for 6 months and then switched to the second, their teeth had moved making inserting the second one difficult. In other words, the retainer itself had altered slightly, allowing their teeth to slightly relapse. To prevent this happening the Vivera system was introduced. My ortho told me that he thinks that the system is a great idea, but unfortunately isn’t available in Australia yet. Hopefully, that’s something that might change in the future. Incidentally to those of you in the US it costs in the region of $300 p.a. depending on the orthodontist.

My ortho’s main reservations about Vivera were that once you ask Invisalign to make your aligners they consider your case finished, even if you haven’t used up all your refinement entitlements. In his experience sometimes people do come back a few months after the end of treatment and ask for something extra. If there are still refinements available that weren’t used in the first instance, he can just get another series of aligners made. However, if retainers had been ordered this wouldn’t be possible. A new Invisalign case would have to be opened.

I am on set 12 at the moment and will post more about the trials of those in the next few days. Thank you for all your comments, as ever, they make writing this thing seem worthwhile.

My orthodontist seems like a nice guy. He is certainly experienced with Invisalign, is funny, reassuring and seems to know what he is doing. Generally he fills me with confidence. I must confess I wasn’t wild about his lectures to his postgrad students on my teeth being called “A silly thing to try and do with Invisalign” but I took it in fairly good heart. However, when at my latest visit he told me that if what he is trying to do to my teeth with Invisalign works, he will write about it for the medical journals, I really started to get nervous…

I’m not so keen on being a guinea pig!

Funnily enough, I don’t like the sound of that. Not that I mind being in the medical journals- I have been in hundreds of magazines in my prior career as a model and presumably I wouldn’t be identified, so that isn’t a problem. Rather it is the feeling that I am some kind of orthodontic guinea pig that is scaring me.

Now I should be fair here. My orthodontist was extremely straightforward with me and told me from the outset that the tooth that I have at the bottom of my mouth would be very hard to move. See my clincheck here. He also warned me before treatment started that there was a good chance that it won’t move at all, and that even having created a space for it, it may just not move up into the place we make for it. If it does, I will need a fixed brace on that tooth and the ones next to it to get it to move. I know all that, and I accept it fully. If the tooth in question fails to move I will have that tooth extracted and either close the gap again or get some kind of implant tooth or similar.

I think what maybe I didn’t appreciate, however, was that it hadn’t really been tried before, or that if it worked it would be such a new technique for Invisalign it would make the medical journals! I thought it was more of a “this could be a bit tricky” scenario, rather than a “this might be a world first” Still, I am going to remain positive, nonetheless. Repeat after me….I believe that my teeth can move, I believe…

Other than scaring me half out of my wits the appointment went well however. He did a tiny bit of Invisalign IPR (filing between my teeth to make them close together tighter) even though it wasn’t on my schedule, just because he felt that two of my teeth were a little close together and might have difficulty moving past each other. I haven’t had Invisalign IPR before and it wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences but it wasn’t awful. He simply took some type of metal file and slid it into the gap between my teeth. He then moved it backwards and forwards between my teeth in a sawing action shaving a tiny bit of tooth off. There was a grinding, grating sensation, and it very definitely felt like he was shaving the sides of my teeth off, but there was absolutely no pain whatsoever. I spent the whole time a little petrified that he would somehow miss and file my gum, but that didn’t happen.

See below for a very quick video on what happens with Invisalign IPR:

Other than that everything is on track. I picked up sets 9-11 and will put set 9 in tonight. The great news is that comparing sets 1-11 I can definitely see some differences in the aligners now, so I shall post some pictures of that over the next couple of days.

Finally, thanks again to everyone for all your comments. I really enjoy getting them and knowing that people are actually reading this!

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